Moving from Passive to Active Learning

Thursday morning began with a presentation by Raymond Schroeder, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield, using an Internet-based teleconferening platform to speak with us from Spokane, Washington.

Ray based his presentation on posts that are available on one of his blogs: Active Online Learning. He contrasted a list of teaching activities that Passive approaches prefer to a list of activities Active approaches emphasize:
Passive approaches emphasize:

Ray shared with us an engaging YouTube clip from the Digital Ethnography program at Kansas State University, a clip that provided “A Vision of Students Today.” He noted that a more passive approach could be turned into a more active approach, in this case by leading a short discussion of the online video clip we had just watched. (Class discussion was facilitated by Michael Koskinen, an Instructional and Technical Support Specialist in CTLT, who carried a wireless microphone around the room, to capture the remarks of individuals who offered comments on the clip, and at other times during the teleconference.

We encounter some technical difficulties with continuing Ray’s presentation, so we finished with watching another intriguing YouTube video from KSU’s Digital Ethnography Program: “The Machine is Us/ing Us.”